by Frank Morin
According to the pre-arranged plan, Shona ripped the flag from Ivor's standard first, and only then did the other two teams take theirs. The three embattled armies never even noticed danger, and were completely surprised when Rory's voice boomed over the battlefield.
"General Lian's army wins."
The look of dismay on the faces of the other generals filled Connor with a sense of relief. He'd actually pulled off the surprise win! He made a point to wave at them as their stunned armies clustered together, trying to understand what happened. Redmund was too busy shouting at Rory that Connor won by cheating, and the entire contest needed to be rescheduled. Padraigin looked stunned and threw out her hands as if to ask what happened.
Ivor shook his head and saluted, a wry grin on his lips.
Connor didn't get a chance to speak with the other generals before his cheering army swept him away to the victory celebration in the castle, where they feasted on mountains of food and regaled each other with their exploits. Declan glowed with pride at the constant barrage of compliments. At one point, an impromptu chant started, with the army shouting loud enough to shake the windows.
"Tower of Terror!"
The two Solas nearly floated off the ground with how big their heads swelled. "No one will ever doubt the battle powers of a Solas again!" they cried so many times Connor was amazed no one threw them out one of those still-quivering windows.
He enjoyed the party, and the newly won loyalty of his army helped him feel at home in the castle like he never had before. It might be a false home, but he would take what he could get.
Shona saluted him at one point, but she wore a smile of victory as if the entire plan had been her idea. She was his patron, no matter that he was general in the field. His victories were her victories, and he'd have to be dumber than a duck roasting in a cook pot not to realize he'd only managed to seal himself tighter than ever to her ultimate plans for him.
The army began chanting Connor's name, so he rose from his seat at the center of the head table and raised his glass high. "To victory!"
As the chanting continued, he decided he didn't really like the name Lian. It lacked the class of Kilian, but then again, any name he chose was just part of the mask he wore, all part of the geall he was running on the school with Shona. So he made a decision and raised his hands for silence.
"In honor of our great victory, you are now ready to receive another of my names."
That elicited a round of laughter and cheers.
"You may all now call me General Anxiety, because every time anyone in any other army meets any of you, that's exactly what they're going to feel!"
The cheering shook the room as his army stomped feet and pounded tables so hard one of them collapsed, spilling food and drink in every direction. That just triggered yet another round of cheering.
Connor seated himself, pleased with the day.
Then Frazier marched into the room, already yelling about the theft of the prism lanterns.
Chapter 34
The only bad thing about flying was the cold.
But flying, well, flying was the most amazing thing Hamish had ever experienced, especially in his new, custom battle suit.
Verena flitted past, like a bat in the still, predawn darkness, with Kilian perched on the supply box attached to the back. Heavy clouds obscured the moon and most of the stars, disguising them from watching eyes. She looked at ease in the air, strapped into her deadly Swift, with its many thrusters able to pivot, roll, and turn with the nimble grace of a hummingbird.
She couldn't lie back and take a nap while flying, though. Hamish hadn't gotten a chance to actually try dozing off, but when hovering, he loved rolling over, hands behind his head, staring up at the clouds. With a flicker of directional thrusters, he could roll again to watch the distant ground below.
He was one with the air, his suit working better than he'd hoped. His main thrusters were built into his boots and along his legs, but he'd adopted the same trick as Verena and added quartzite blocks everywhere he could squeeze them in. The suit granted him as much mobility as her Swift, but did not lock him into a rigid seat like hers.
"Come on," Verena called to him as she ascended. They were too high up, with too much wind noise to communicate normally. Plus, their helmets, goggles, and face masks, required to protect them from the fierce wind and cold of the heights, made speaking to each other impossible. So they'd installed speakstones.
Hamish laughed as he soared high over the Grandurian army, camped in the single pass leading through the Maclachlan Mountains to Obrion. His voice sounded a bit thin, partially because of the mask he wore, but mostly because the air so high up was thin, like dough stretched to the breaking point.
The dark plateau upon which the army camped was already almost ten thousand feet above the distant lowland plains of central Granadure. Hamish was flying at least three thousand feet above them and still climbing.
Verena had explained the strange phenomenon of the air thinning the higher they flew. To Hamish it made perfect sense. It was like his mother's best soups. The chunky bits always fell to the bottom, leaving the top layers thin and watery.
Dawn would soon creep upon the world, and they needed to complete their reconnaissance while they could remain unseen in the shadow of the mighty Mount Osterwald. When holding a hover, the little Swift was almost as quiet as his battle suit, barely louder than a distant wind. Only when Verena threw wide the release rate on the main quartzite blocks to ascend quickly did the Swift roar like a hungry pedra.
Hamish hated that he didn't know the Obrioner name of the towering peak that formed the pass which would soon become a battlefield. He'd been shocked to learn the Grandurians had different names for everything. He'd always known the Maclachlans as the impassable mountain range protecting their northern border. To the Grandurians, those mountains were their southern defense. They called them the Abwehr Mountains.
"That's weird," Hamish had said when he found out. "Saying the Drumwhindle Pass is in the Abwehr Mountains is wrong."
"You think our names are weird," Verena had said with a smirk. "Who came up with the name Drumwhindle anyway? A drunk bagpiper?"
"Hey, don't give bagpipers a hard time," Hamish had retorted. "You try making those pipes sing. It's not as easy as they make it look."
"I've heard the noise they make. If that's singing, you must think howling cats sound beautiful."
"What do you call the pass then?" he'd asked.
"It's the Badurach Pass."
Whatever they chose to call it, the area was breathtaking, with sweeping vistas to the north, east, and west. Hamish rotated slowly, drinking in the view, even though most of the land lay in deep shadow. The army filled the high plateau that narrowed as it rose toward the pass. Mount Osterwald reared at least two thousand feet above the pass in twin towers of sheer, snowcapped stone, split down the middle by Badurach Pass, as if a giant ax stroke had sundered the top of the mountain. The peak was impassable on either side, and there were no other good passes anywhere through the range. It was simply the most daunting natural barrier Hamish could imagine.
Impassable to everyone who couldn't fly.
Verena swooped in close on the Swift. She and Kilian were both bundled against the cold, and Kilian looked relaxed, despite the long drop back to solid ground.
"Are you falling asleep in that suit?" Verena called.
The armored jacket was a bit bulky, with its layers of overlapping granite scales on the outside, an inner leather jacket on the inside, and a unique bladder full of water under that. That bladder was the ultimate key to its effectiveness. The thin layer of water, moving in a constant gentle current by a touch of soapstone, would help absorb and dissipate the force of direct strikes. Plus, after adding a tiny bit of activated marble into the mix, he kept it warm enough to offset the bitter cold of the high altitude.
His limbs were not as heavily armored, but retained the flexibility he needed for aerial maneuvering and com
bat. They were packed with weapons and inventions and Builded stones, an arsenal he could activate by a flicker of thought and in which he felt confident facing even another pair of rampagers.
"Lead the way," Hamish said, gesturing at the looming peak and the dark split of Badurach pass.
Verena shot off in that direction, with Kilian clinging tight. Hamish gave chase, adjusting the force of the many quartzite thrusters built into his suit. He was still experimenting with the best position for flight. When hovering, he preferred lounging, although upright felt natural too. For fast flying, he found that horizontal was by far the most efficient, with hands down by his side. For an added burst of speed, he could add the force of his hand thrusters.
Hamish glanced back at the army. Sappers on high earthen towers formed a picket at the front and along the flanks of the army. Longseers shared their towers, and Wingrunners zipped back and forth in a constant stream of messages, like the lifeblood of the army.
Hamish wondered why they bothered. When he and Verena had arrived in the camp the evening prior, they had delivered another hundred pair of speakstones. The marvelous devices made communication a breeze. Each officer was given one, and all he had to do was speak into it. All of the paired stones were kept in a central listening tent, adjacent to the main command tent, so all information was gathered for the commanders, who then issued new orders.
On the Grandurian side of the pass, the plateau grew very narrow, rising through a steep-sided canyon the last few hundred yards. A thick wall of builded granite with a single, heavy gate blocked the entrance to the slot of the pass. To the north of the gate, that deep canyon was blocked by no less than four high walls, topped with crenellations and manned by many soldiers.
The path zigged and zagged between those walls, with the only openings set at the very ends, right up against the canyon walls, forcing any Obrioner intruders to pass down the length of each wall to reach the next opening. To make it even more difficult, angled barriers of spiked steel blocked the way at regular intervals.
The sight of the fortifications and armed men drove home the reality of the looming war. The armies were prepared. They had all known for a long time that the fight would come there, and they were ready. When the fighting started, a lot of people were going to die.
Hamish shivered. He'd seen enough battle to know it was better avoided. There had to be a way to prevent all that useless death. Was the work he was doing with the Builders going to save lives, destroy them, or both? Were his inventions going to save more than they claimed?
Plagued by those dark thoughts, Hamish swooped into the pass behind Verena, a thousand feet above the wall. The Badurach Pass ran in a straight line for nearly a quarter of a mile, little more than a deep cut through solid rock. Sentries would be unable to bring to bear the might of their earth powers there. The pass was as dark as pitch, and Hamish slowed, drawing close to the others.
Verena activated a single, faint beam of light from a piece of limestone. Set in a focus prism, it cast a beam of light that Verena played across the walls that were barely a hundred feet apart. The beam would be difficult to detect even by Pathfinders far below, but Hamish still wished they could have avoided it.
He was sneaking across the border, back into his homeland, but as an enemy to the nation. The fact that he would be executed if he landed on the Obrioner side reinforced his conflicted worry. He loved his nation and did not want to see her citizens get killed, but Granadure was his home and he cared for them too.
The narrow confines of the pass magnified the sounds of their thrusters, turning the steady wind of their passage into an echoing roar. Again, Hamish doubted anyone could hear them, and he saw nothing threatening. It was blacker than the inside of a cast-iron kettle.
They slowed as they reached the southern boundary of the pass, and Verena cut off the light. The gray, pre-dawn sky looked bright against the dark walls of the pass and made it easier to navigate.
Another wall with a heavy gate, manned by a large company of soldiers, blocked the Obrioner side of the pass. Hamish and Verena settled into a nearly-silent hover and floated high above the unsuspecting men, slowly emerging from the pass to study the defenses.
Instead of a deep canyon leading from the pass, the Obrioner side was more like a narrow causeway. The mountain just stopped, and cliffs fell away on both sides of the passage, forming another daunting barrier. Three walls with offset gates blocked the causeway. If the Grandurians attempted the first frontal assault, they'd lose a lot of men. Would such mutually-guaranteed heavy losses hold the armies back?
He doubted it.
The Grandurians held a unique advantage. They could launch an invasion into Obrion almost anywhere along the border by flying their army over the mountains in the windriders. Did General Carbrey understand that risk? Was he ready for it?
The Obrioner camp was massed close to the top of the plateau on the far side of the causeway, as if barely restraining themselves from shoving through the gap to get at the enemy. Even from such a height, Hamish felt the tension of that camp, as if soldiers there were prepped and ready to throw themselves into battle. He shivered to think how soon such an assault might commence.
Hamish activated another new invention as the three of them hovered in the throat of the pass. Opening the release rate on a set of thin, quartzite blocks attached to the outer edge of his goggles, a clear image of the breathtaking view rippled across his goggles.
Despite the popularity of the speakstones, Builders had found only limited success trying to unlock quartzite abilities to enhance other senses. Instead, they had focused on the air power of quartzite, exploring its potential as the catalyst of flight.
For Petralists, applying quartzite internally to enhance the senses was far easier, and the benefits of that use for military purposes was widely accepted. Few of them bothered trying to tap quartzite externally because for them, walking with the air was so unstable and unpredictable.
Hamish had made a major breakthrough only a week prior as they studied the potential for quartzite to enhance vision. While holding a piece of quartzite in either hand, he'd taken a break from peering through each of them in turn to lean forward and take a bite out of a pastry sitting on his work bench. When he'd drawn the two activated stones apart and thrust his head between his hands, his vision had blurred, then sharpened dramatically.
It had been a wonderful experience. He'd never seen any pastry look so beautiful. He could count the individual grains of sugar coating the golden-brown surface, see the fluffy dough stretched to the breaking point.
Once they understood the concept, they'd quickly developed the custom goggles they both wore while flying. Verena had dubbed them Long View Goggles. Activating them above the pass, it took Hamish only a few seconds to fine-tune the release rate on the various stones until the image projecting onto the surface of his goggles exactly matched what he had seen with his natural vision.
Then by carefully increasing the release rate, he zoomed in. It was like swooping down upon the camp, but without moving. His focus narrowed, but grew far more detailed and he was able to scan the camp with astonishing detail from thousands of feet overhead.
Sentries on their earthen towers were easy to spot. He picked out Boulders, Striders, and even a number of Spitters near huge, wooden reservoirs. Thousands of soldiers and cavalry made up the bulk of the camp. He spotted the central command tower, but did not see General Carbrey. He almost missed the gigantic piles of earth rearing along the flanks of the army. They were so big, he at first mistook them for natural hills.
After silently studying the camp for another ten minutes, the three eased back into the pass and slipped down its length to the Grandurian side. Dawn was fast approaching, and the sky was already far lighter. The sun would appear on the eastern horizon eventually, but the army was already easily visible without the long view goggles.
"Did you see those huge mounds of earth?" Verena asked as Hamish drew close and flew beside the
m, lying on his side as if on a couch.
"Must have taken every Sentry in that camp a week to move that much earth," Hamish said.
"With that much material on hand," Kilian added. "They might be planning to lead with earth after all."
"I didn't see any sign of rampagers," Verena said.
Kilian shook his head. "I would have been surprised. If we're right, they're Dougal's secret weapon. It did look like the army was massing for some kind of movement, though."
"Do you think they'll take the bait and try a raid on the weakening powder?" Hamish asked.
Kilian nodded. "It appears so."
"When?" Verena asked as they swooped across the plateau and waved at the Longseers stationed in a pair of hovering windriders positioned high above the pass.
"They will come tonight."
Chapter 35
The screaming was louder than Verena expected.
The cold air carried the sounds up to her with a crisp clarity that made her shiver in her seat on the Swift. She couldn't explain why the thin air high above the plateau facing the Badurach Pass could both make breathing difficult and sharpen the sounds that reached her. Perhaps those sounds had to be far more determined to claw so high above the fighting.
The sun had just set, leaving a bright orange stain across the distant western peaks that colored the fires raging in the pass a more sinister red. As Kilian had predicted, the Obrioner army had attacked into the pass through that waning light.
"If the assault is only a diversion, as I expect it will be," Kilian had explained during their briefing with General Wolfram, Anton, and the other army leaders, "they will attack late in the day, but they will keep their inventory of earth so painstakingly prepared in reserve for the real assault."
Facing south into the darkening gap of the pass, Verena saw no sign of Sentry activity as she hovered high above the Grandurian fortifications. A little below her position, four windriders hovered, bearing Longseers equipped with speakstones to relay their reports back to Wolfram. Dierk also rode in the lead wagon, as did one of his mighty diorite bombs. Only four of the huge bombs had been produced. Hamish had dubbed them The Last Word.